TanTan's Library
by Althea SaDiablo
Summary: The stories contained herein are drawn from TanTan's library, kept in strictest confidence under his bed and available to approved members only. Those wishing access must swear never to reveal their contents, even in the face of bamboo-throwing demons.
1. Emperor in Waiting

Author's Note: this has been lurking about my files for a dog's age, or thereabouts, and I finally decided to start a new story set to post it, and similar things lacking in taste that I've come up with over time. This was written for a fic battle over on the saiunkoku_fic livejournal community, for prompt 82: Senka/Ryuuki - not so innocent fatherly moment. Warnings for zombie pr0n! Well, nothing explicit, anyway, I don't do explicit. But all the fics in this series will have similarly questionable content, you've been warned!

* * *

The only remaining Prince came as he was bid, secretly, to stand before the Emperor. He shivered, just barely, under the brush of the chill breeze of early spring, and the Emperor's thinned lips tightened. But the Prince did not flinch under his father's assessing gaze, and he was unmarked. That no scar of any sort marred the smoothness of his skin or wrote another's mark over muscle and whipcord tendon was a silent testament-- this one had some worth, well-hidden though it might be.

"When I am gone, _he_ will come for you. I will not have him take you unprepared."

The golden eyes narrowed, and suddenly he was looking through time at a mirror. "I've been bedded."

The Emperor snorted, scornful, and rose. "Who said anything about bedding? Come."

Each step he took was slow, deliberate, controlled. His body was failing, but his will was purest steel. The room beyond was splendid but bare, impersonal, with all the marks of humanity and personality long since eradicated. The Prince's eyes flickered over the unpadded chairs, the empty walls, the map inlaid in stone in the floor, the uncushioned couch.

"Tomorrow, or the next day, it will be my death bed," the Emperor said. "And perhaps, some day, it will be yours."

He gestured imperiously, and the Prince did as he was bid and removed each successive robe from his father's shoulders. Age had only hardened him, but his sword arm hung withered and useless at his side. The curse scrawled dark over the puckered flesh and exposed lines of bone, with coiling tendrils creeping across his chest under the skin to claim his heart. Aside from his father's brand and despite years of battle, it was the only imprint he bore.

The Prince made no effort to hide his stare, and the Emperor laughed without humor. "Yes, I bear another's mark."

"What is it?" the Prince asked.

"Each of my sons I have saved, but only once. You wasted my largess early, drowning yourself in a fish pond. Your second eldest brother waited until he was nearly grown. With this arm I took his curse."

"It's killing you."

"And soon, it will succeed." The Emperor raised the withered limb and flexed the skin-and-bone claw of his hand between them. "Does it disgust you?"

The Prince took the putrefying arm in his hands without hesitation and raised its rotten flesh to his lips. "This arm," he said, "is the part of you I love."

"Lie down," the Emperor commanded.

He was not gentle, but never once during the long night did the Emperor-in-waiting cry out.


	2. the Fall of a King

Oh ye gods, something else I have to pretend I didn't write. ::hides:: The fic battle on lj has led to the complete moral degradation of my character . . . curse my muse, spirit of perversity! This was written for the prompt "122) Ryuuki/Shuurei. Bondage."

Um. Warnings for extreme angst. Contains pr0n! Me-style pr0n, but still pr0n. I'm going to the Special Hell, wheee!

* * *

Perhaps it amused the new leaders to grant her request. Or maybe it was because she'd "bent her proud Kou knees," as Seiga had once said, sneeringly, and begged. But she had no pride, not any more, not where he was concerned.

The jail cells were still dank and dripping, though their newly fitted bars and doors hadn't yet acquired the crumbling rust that had once characterized the place. That she had personally pushed for and then overseen the refitting seemed a terribly cruel irony now. Bile rose in her throat when she thought of how, before the improvements, prisoners had so easily escaped. But now it was too late, too late.

The guard clanged the butt of his halberd against the bars as an announcement, and the sound echoed, magnified by the unrelieved stone. "Visitor for Your Majesty," he said, and Shuurei was shaken a little to hear his voice polite, even somewhat respectful. He unlocked the cell door without a moment's hesitation.

The cell's occupant sat up against one dripping wall-- not by choice, she realized immediately, because his hands were suspended above his head, manacled to chains that were too short for comfort. Ryuuki still wore his robes, but they had not fared well during his stay in the dungeons, no more than he had. His arms exposed where the sleeves had fallen were bruised, and he was too thin under the folds. His face was hidden in the dim torchlight, the shadow thrown by his bangs hiding it from view. "Thank you, Gui," he said, and his voice was hoarse and raw, but still genuine, still so very _him_.

So much so that it was impossible to hold herself back. As soon as the door was opened she ran in and dropped to her knees beside him, heedless of the bare stone floor, forgetting even the departing guard as she reached with one trembling hand for his face. Under her touch his head came up, the glazed golden eyes met hers and went wide. "Shuurei?"

She smiled at him even as her vision momentarily swam, as her throat tightened so much that it was hard to force the words through. "It's me."

Suddenly he was animated, his shoulders rising from the wall, his feet trying to force him to stand, his weight hanging from the rattling chains. His expression was horrified. "Shuurei, no, no! Why are you here? Ensei was supposed to get you out, he swore to me he'd get you out!"

She stopped his struggle with an arresting hand on his knee, turned his frantic face towards her again. "And I swore that I would be with you until the end. Did you think I would break that vow?"

"You can get away from here," he said, hoarsely. "You have to get away, you have to be safe. Leave me, leave me now. Gui will help you, there's still time. Please, please Shuurei. I need you to get away, I don't want you to see . . . I don't want you to see me die, Shuurei, please--"

"Hush," she said, "hush."

Tears were running down his face. "Shuurei, please go, please. He swore to me, he swore-- Shuurei, I'm so sorry, if only I had--"

"Hush," she said, and kissed him. Kissed him because it was too late-- she should have done it before, she should have done it a thousand times before. A thousand kisses in one kiss, which became two, three. He was missing a tooth one one side, he had fought-- how he had fought. Salt was on her lips, as if she had drunk an ocean of tears, and they were drowning together.

He moaned when she pulled back, and the chains rattled. She followed his arms up and rubbed life into his limp hands again, moved the long and elegant fingers with their split and uncared-for nails. His wrists were raw where the merciless iron had rubbed against them, and she tore the cloth from her waist to pad them.

Again she touched his face, ran her hands down to the neck of his robe. He was watching her, so intently, and his pupils were huge and black in the dim light. "Please," he said, desperately, helplessly, as if he no longer knew what to ask for. "Please."

"We don't need words," she told him, "not anymore."

She pushed fabric aside to run her hands down his washboard ribs, wondering how the skin could still be so soft over them, so responsive to her touch. And there the jutting bone of his hip, and his breath hitched-- each and every one of his breathes was precious to her now, so infinitely precious. She swallowed them, and pressed herself against the rise and fall of his chest. Shoulder blades, the dipped line of his spine, the length of his back-- he was pushing back against her, mouth demanding, using the chains at his wrists for what little leverage they gave, using the wall behind him. His robes hung loosely open over his shoulders, his bare feet moved restlessly over the cold stone floor. But he was warming now, and her as well. She hiked her skirts up out of the way and straddled his lap, and even though there was no time, no _time_ she paused there, as close to him as she could possibly come.

"I love you," she whispered in his ear, "I love you."

He sucked hard at her neck and she didn't care, bit down and she loved it because it hurt. She managed somehow to open her robe one-handed, the other too busy between them, and rose to her knees so that he could reach more of her skin. Only to come down again, hard, at the shock of cold air-- and again, and _again_, rubbing against him, frantic with the need that had been denied too long, that would be denied forever--

He cried again afterwards, and she held him, and didn't think about what she was saying. "I love you," she said.

And she promised him that everything would be all right.


	3. Two Hearts

Author's Note: The title is taken from Peter S. Beagle's novella, as a tribute and with my deepest respect. As with the other chapters, this story was written for the fic battle on the saiunkoku_fic community. The prompt was as follows: "_Bara Hime/Ryuki -Barahime wakes up in Shuurei's body and pretends to be Shuurei to get closer to Ryuuki._" But, well, me being me, I can never do exactly what one might expect with a prompt. My muse is the spirit of perversity, after all. And so!

* * *

She opened her eyes to lines of blurry print; when she lifted her head they resolved into columns of neat characters that detailed an obscure point in the national tax system. She raised a hand to her forehead-- a smaller hand than she remembered, the fingers shorter-- and not for the first time cursed the particulars of her own existence, the rules that bound her to life time and time again. This above all things she had never wanted.

She left the room and found herself in the familiar corridors of the main Kou residence. Her memories of it were many, and full of joy, but now the sight flooded her with aching despair. She had never expected to see them again, and yet here she was. Instinct guided her steps as she looked for Shouka.

She found him in the offices of the clan head, dressed more splendidly than she had ever seen him, save once on the day of their wedding. His face had lines now that it had never possessed before, crows' feet around his eyes, strands of silver in the midnight of his hair. But though time was leaving its mark on him it hadn't dulled his senses; his head jerked up instinctively at her presence in the doorway, and his intense, blood-red eyes went wide and defenseless and terrified.

She knew exactly how he felt; opening her eyes had broken her heart in two. "Hello, my love," she said.

He stood slowly, gasped raggedly. "Shoukun."

She nodded and spared him the need to attempt moving by pulling a chair up to the desk across from him. He collapsed back into his, slumping over the surface of the table. After a moment she took his hands in hers, trying not to notice the contrast between them where once they had matched the span from fingertip to fingertip. His eyes squeezed shut, and he raised her fingers to his lips.

"I never wanted to cause you this pain," she said, "not again, at least."

"All those times I prayed to have you back," he whispered, "but I didn't know-- like this, I didn't know . . ."

"You couldn't have known," she said gently, in the voice that was not hers.

"I missed you so much," he said to her hands, "so very much. I never stopped loving you."

"I left you my heart," she murmured. "You've taken good care of her."

He flinched as if she had struck him. "Is she-- is Shuurei--"

"Gone," she said, and tightened her hands around his trembling ones. The skin was drier than she remembered, the webwork of cracks finer. "But not dead. Not dead, love, not yet. There might be a chance."

He had always been far too brave; he faced the twin hopes that were also twin despairs squarely as they tore him in two. "What do you mean?"

"That man," she said, remembering. "The blond one, with his father's eyes."

"Ryuuki," Shouka said with a thick voice.

"Is that his name?" she shook her head. "Is he worthy of her?"

"He is already a son of my heart," the ex-archivist said.

"Does she love him?"

Shouka paused. "She hasn't said."

"Ah," Shoukun said, "ah." Gently she set her husband's hands down on the wooden desk; they lay there helpless and limp, like broken birds. "There is a chance."

He stared at them as if they were not his, and raised bleeding eyes to her face. "I want-- I don't want--" She touched the tears streaming down his hollow cheeks. "How can I lose you again?" he whispered.

"We challenged fate, you and I," she told him, cupping his face in too-small hands. "This is the price."

He was still as a stone under her touch. "I could never choose between you."

She smiled at him, and it was terrible. "Let us be glad, then, that it has never been your choice to make."

His eyes were closed, his face drawn tight with pain.

She kissed him, only once. "You must take me to him," she commanded; and he obeyed.

************************************

He set her down in the gardens of the palace. "You'll find him here, probably," Shouka said, "he has trouble sleeping at night, and he loves the gardens."

She nodded and stepped free of the circle of his strong arms. "That, at least, is good to hear," she said gravely. "I can approve of a man who can love a garden."

He reached after her, then let his hand drop again without touching her. "I love you," he said simply; just that.

She nodded, and walked towards the cherry trees, pale as ghosts in the moonlight. Beneath their gilded branches she found the one whom she sought, a robe of purple laid across his shoulders, his blond hair leeched of color. The son of a tyrant, the unwanted Prince, the reluctant Emperor. The man who loved her daughter.

He had been looking up into the luminous blossoms, but he turned sharply when she approached on silent feet, that imperious gaze sweeping the shadows that concealed her. "Who's there?" he demanded.

She stepped forward-- not too far-- and watched his face change, the swift chase of emotion across it. "Shuurei?" he said, bewildered, not quite believing, his eyes and his heart in conflict. "What are you doing here? What's wrong?"

He knew instinctively to ask that question, and her heart tore a little more. "I came to see you," she said; it was not a lie.

"I'm here," he said, stepping closer, frowning. "Of course I'm here. Did something happen?"

She let her head fall forward, let her fists clench, felt her shoulders bow with pressure. He paused only a moment and then he was there, gathering her in, not forcing her: offering. War and blood was the legacy left to him, but he had learned gentleness somehow, and a great love lived inside him. She only hoped it would be enough. "Whatever it is, you can tell me," he said, his hands soft on her back, curving over the hard ridges of her shoulder blades. "Shuurei, how--"

"Hold me," she whispered to him, "tighter." And when he hesitated again, nuzzled her face into the front of his robe. He smelled of linen and soap, ink and paper and the incense that had been used to scent his clothes-- and under that another scent, faintly and distinctly male. It reminded her of Shouka-- but she must not, _must not_ think about him, must think only of this man who held her now with a man's strength, whose fingers had become harder with what must be worry. She could hear his heart, a steady beat under her ear.

"Of course," he said, comforting, "of course," but what he didn't know was that it wasn't enough. She slowly tightened her fist on the collar of the sleeping robe, pulling him closer until they were body to body, breast to breast, and she was drawing herself up on her toes. His eyes went wide as she found the side of his face, moved his head to the proper angle.

"Shuurei--" was all he had time for, and then she was kissing him.

He responded; he couldn't not, and she kissed the corner of his mouth, his jaw. "I don't understand," he said.

"You don't need to," she said, frantic and reckless, and had them both staggering back against the tree trunk, had cold hands against his warm chest, making him gasp. His hands were down her back, over the dip in her spine and then the curve of her rear, and she was taken by surprise by the wave of desire that swamped her, want for an essential act of life that would also be her dissolution. For her they had always been one and the same.

His hands were low and intimate though cloth still stood between them. A shift of her leg behind his knee and they were closer still, and then they were sliding together down the trunk of the tree to the thick coolness of the grass beneath. She was pressing his head back against the wood, pulling from him another kiss, one that left both their mouths bruised.

That he wanted her, desperately, was obvious, but still he hesitated. "Shuurei," he said, and she used his chest to push herself up to her knees above him; he was looking up into her face, intently, and she didn't know what he saw there. All she remembered of her daughter was a frail child with huge brown eyes. "Tell me what you want from me," he pleaded.

She freed the sash from her waist and let it drop, watched his eyes go wide as she opened her robe. The spring night was still cool, and she shivered to feel it again on unaccustomed skin. "Call my heart to you," she told him, and took his hands and guided them to her breasts.

He followed them with his mouth pressed to the underside, and she made herself forget that the proportions were all wrong, and made herself forget whose mouth it wasn't, that the name he moaned against her skin wasn't actually hers. "Again," she told him, and he whispered the name to her sternum, her clavicle, rolled her over in the grass and found it in the curve of her waist, sent it ghosting between her legs.

"I love you," he said, and she moaned, unmoored by his touch, feeling the heart inside her kindle. "Please, Shuurei, please, come back to me--"

She guided him inside her even as she felt her perception slide, he was as close as he could be, closer; she was crushed against his chest with desperate strength-- "Again," she commanded, with her last breath, "again!"

He arched backward in the moonlight-- "Shuurei!" and she blazed up like a fire, and was consumed.

************************************

Shuurei opened her eyes slowly, blinking at the silver layers of blossoms floating pale against the sky. Warmth suffused her-- a familiar body held her close, pressed in all its long length against her, and soft feather-light hair tickled her belly, her neck.

"Ryuuki," she whispered, and trailed her hands down his back. He felt real in her arms, so good and warm and alive, and she _could_ feel. Something in her chest hurt, raw and aching.

"Shuurei?" He reared up on his elbows above her, not quite believing, and she reached up and touched the wetness of tears on his face. "Oh, thank the heavens-- you're you, you're you again-- I was so afraid-- Shuurei, Shuurei you're crying--"

"So are you," she said, and laughed and sobbed and held him close, "so are you."


	4. Halls of Memory

Author's Note: Another ficlet written for the saiunkoku_fic Secret Santa Exchange. I've been debating for a while whether this should go in Forgotten Works or not. "After all," I said to Yamino Majo, "nothing actually _happens_, or is said . . . you could consider it to not be there at all . . ." "But it is, er, somewhat_ implied,_" she said. Which settled the case for TanTan's Library. Before anyone asks, it's nothing from Back Then, it's more the Perhaps Later that landed this fic under TanTan's bed.

Nevertheless . . . Ticket to the Special Hell-- GET!

* * *

Seiran walked the halls of memory again, past gardens that time had forgotten. Had it forgotten him? He hoped so, because he had forgotten nothing, as much as he longed to. Had not forgotten that tree with the crooked limb, just there, the needles reaching like clawed fingers. Nor had he forgotten that cracked tile, there, shattered by a thousand thin lines but every fragment still perfectly in place. Nor the bank of early irises, soon to bloom, their sharp leaves poking through the soft soil like blades through yielding flesh. Nor the sounds, the muted bustle that lay beneath the spring stillness of the garden, the bird calls that spoke a thousand messages to his ears.

He had not forgotten the deadly forest where he had learned their voices and the words they spoke, either. Not the adult-deep but young voice speaking close to his ear, identifying them one at a time, reading their songs aloud to him. The voice that had made it okay when he had forgotten, for a time, how to be gentle.

Was that who he needed to be here? But he remembered everything, now. He was both the silver wolf, the reaving wind among the trees, and . . . that other one, known to so few that he'd had no name, lost until another child had called him-- "Sei-ran! Seiran!"

His ear caught the sound of another bird, deciphered the secret of its voice. But he hadn't needed it, really, because this too he remembered. That certain spot, concealed by branches, impossible to approach unless you knew the secret way: loop behind, around that bunch of rocks, and then round the treetrunk, and _there_--

What had he expected? His perfect memory held a child, soft and unformed, whose innocence and neediness had undone him and remade his heart. A child he had carried always, somewhere inside him, locked away from cruel world that had forged the rest of him into a killing edge. A child who had reached out, despite it all, and had become . . . another child, who saw only that heart within him and not the cold steel wind that bristled all around.

This was not that child. Violet-robed, yes, that he remembered, but not the long shape of the limbs beneath. The pale hair catching the light, the overhanging bangs-- but it was different now, had lost its remaining baby-fineness to lie long and sleek against a strong, broad shoulder. Were the man's eyes still warm and bright as the child's had been, still expressive and so very dangerously open? He couldn't tell; they were closed, shuttered behind too-long golden lashes. Nothing of the face he'd known remained.

"Ryuuki," he named this stranger, and with the word felt the full shock of displacement, as if all that lost time had slammed into him at once, like a fist slamming into his stomach. The heart inside his chest twisted, and he was suddenly, savagely angry-- time had stolen his brother, had stolen his most precious thing, had stolen all the memories he should have had-- had stolen all the moments between then and now when he should have watched the transition between child and man-- a thief in the night, had _stolen_ it--

Ryuuki stirred, and Seiran froze, about to drive his fist into the earth again. With an effort he caught his breath, held it, and then exhaled slowly-- even as Ryuuki exhaled, a long, soft breath. And reminded him of those times, too few, when that child, exhausted by play, had curled up beside him. When he had held that child close and felt strong, felt worthy, felt both gentle and fierce, felt _reconciled_, all his dark nature given reason and a heart of light. A time when he had measured his breath to that of his brother, and known that by that measure would his worth be judged.

He would accept nothing less; that had not changed, could not be changed by something so trivial as time. Daring greatly, he reached out and brushed his fingers over the plane of Ryuuki's cheek, the line of his jaw, imprinting it in his memory. Perhaps this new face had been there all along, and he hadn't seen it until now. If he held Ryuuki close to his heart once more, would it be the same?

"Aniue--" Ryuuki's voice was soft against his fingers-- a different voice, a man's voice, saying a word Seiran had not heard in a long, long time. A name that had once been his.

"I'm taking it back, Ryuuki," he promised his brother in a soft whisper. "I'm taking it back."

That name, that purpose, that measure . . . they would be his again.


End file.
